Republican dissidents have launched a bitter attack on Martin McGuinness after he toasted the Queen at Windsor Castle during the Irish presidential visit to Britain.

Gary Donnelly, a former Real IRA prisoner and independent republican election candidate in Derry, said the deputy first minister's attendance at the state banquet was "hardly part of a strategy building towards a united Ireland".

Donnelly told a rally to mark the anniversary of the 1916 Easter Rising that real republicans would never toast or shake hands with the Queen.

Several hundred hardline republicans attended the rally organised by the 32 County Sovereignty Committee – the political allies of the New IRA. The crowd clapped and cheered when Donnelly denounced McGuinness.

After the commemoration, Donnelly said that if he was elected to Derry city council in the May local elections he would continue to justify the "armed struggle" of the New IRA and other organisations opposed to the peace process.

"I believe in the fundamental right to resist British rule, it is in the 1916 proclamation and it is black and white. I believe you have the right to fight for your national sovereignty. Didn't the British send a taskforce to the Malvinas to defend their so-called sovereignty?" he said.

Donnelly gained more than 600 first-preference votes in the local elections three years ago in the republican Creggan and Bogside wards of Derry.

The former republican prisoner said he hoped that anger among grassroots republicans over McGuinness attending the royal banquet would boost his vote in May.

Donnelly, who is also a member of the Creggan Community Collective, said his campaign would also focus on rising poverty levels in Derry.

He is among up to 20 independent republican candidates standing in the local elections in Northern Ireland. The contest will be an indicator of whether republican dissidents command any support within the nationalist community.